Never vote for any Democrat? Here's what one Marxist has to say

By oaklandsocialist on July 5, 2024

***Some on the left live in their own echo chamber***

Introduction: Oaklandsocialist is on an email list of supposed Marxists. Recently, there was another of the interminable debates about whether or not to vote for a Democrat to keep Trump out. Some hide behind Biden's support for Israel's genocidal war to argue against voting for him. They are hiding their real view. That view is that socialists should not argue in favor of voting for any Democrat anytime, anywhere. These "Marxists" call to mind what Marx's co-thinker, Frederick Engels, said about people

**Friedrich Engels**
**What he wrote applies to the "Never vote Democrat" so-called Marxists of today.**

like them. He said they: "have not understood how to use their theory as a lever which could set the American masses in motion; they do not understand the theory themselves for the most part and treat it in a doctrinaire and dogmatic way, as something which has got to be learnt off by heart but which will then supply all needs without more ado. To them it is a credo [creed] and not a guide to action."

We have some additional comments below, but first, here is the email we received;

According to Nico Poulantzas, fascism arises out of the split in the ruling class as to how to proceed at particular crisis points. It also arises AFTER a series of defeats of the labor – and, I would add, defeat of social movements for progress and to gain more rights.

Capitalism is clearly at a crisis point (and has been for a while), and that need not be proven to death.
With the Supreme Court having defeated the labor, social movements for ecological sanity, and women's rights, and the vote in favor of the most lethal weapons to be available to any lunatic, the second of the above has been accomplished.

This is where we are.

People, including socialist left, that pretends there is no difference, at THIS JUNCTION, right now, between voting for Dems or Republicans, are shirking a huge historical responsibility. The socialist left may sit on their hands, but those hands could soon be in handcuffs, at best.
Do people think that the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers and assorted other rightwing militias are only going to go after a few select Dem politicos? And the socialists can just rejoice in the two capitalist ruling parties killing each other? Those foot soldiers are dying to get their hands on us!
People, including socialist left, may be harboring the illusion that when things get worse, more people will magically come down with a radical left awakening and rise up!!
No such thing will happen. With the state with more dictatorial powers at its disposal, more repression will follow. "People in the streets" will get beaten down. Real working people have to pay rent and pay their bills. They don't have infinite resources. The fascists have tons more resources. And tons more guns.
What is the socialist left in the US going to do to protect itself, never mind protecting anybody else? Right now, the socialist left is stuck to their screens, attending webinars, writing articles stating the obvious. Sad to say, but that's the depressing truth.

So, our choice is a shitty one, but it's the only choice we have: Get as many Dems into office as we can, and we will get four years to get our shit together. Otherwise, if not this time around, we'll done for a whole generation.

This writer then sent some additional comments:

I don't know if I'm alone in feeling the urgency here. But I feel that these socialists who are taking this moment as nothing unusual are really not thinking straight. Either because they don't know how to respond to the situation, or so dogmatic that they believe their own avowals of anti-imperialism literally, AND they can't even see their own elimination as a possibility.

As the founder of this Marxist email list would ask, "What are you going to do next"? Like, really, and existentially, and practically, in whatever way you can in this social world. The Project 2025 has laid it out clearly what they are going to do. And that's only the 'spoken out loud' part.

Oaklandsocialist comments: In our view, what we are facing is a one person dictatorship (AKA "Bonapartism"), not outright fascism. But that is secondary. The main point is that the US working class has seen defeat after defeat for decades now. These include one defeated strike after another. Most of these strikes did not result in the outright loss of the union, but they meant concessions after concessions. We have also seen massive job losses, especially in heavy industry (auto, steel, etc.) The response of the union leadership has been to become even more cowardly, even more submissive to the employers. This has created widespread demoralization and confusion, in fact an outright crisis, within the working class.

So, an enormous vacuum has developed and into this vacuum has stepped right wing populism in the person of Trump. This same phenomenon is happening globally, as election results in Italy and France show. Even in Britain, where the Labour Party won a resounding victory, Nigel Farage's right wing populist Reform UK party made some gains.

The task of the hour is to stop Trump and MAGA. For that, Resistance Committees independent of the Democrats and all their stalking horses (the union bureaucracy, the NGO's, etc.) are necessary. Oaklandsocialist has discussed this idea elsewhere. Those who argue against voting for Democrats now or ever in the end are saying there is not much difference between the Democrats and today's Republican Party. This is using behind abstract theory to obscure the present reality. Not only that, but if we are serious about building a movement to stop MAGA, then in the end our vote must reflect that. There is only one party whose candidates can defeat the MAGA candidates at present. That is the Democratic Party candidates. As Oaklandsocialist has proven in the past, there is nothing stopping us from both campaigning for the independent role of the working class leading to a working class party while at the same time voting for the Democrats in this particular situation. The "Marxists" who oppose voting for any Democrats anytime, anywhere in general have the luxury of doing so because they have no intention of doing anything real to resist MAGA in the real world. They don't need to worry about how difficult it will be to organize under Trump/MAGA domination.